Agent Otter
by MeteorLeopard
Summary: "It started with grit in her eye and ended with three dead." Romance and espionage! Set in an AU Second Great Wizarding War World. Dramione. Oneshot. Written by SugarFox. Enjoy! :)


**Alright! So this story is based off a short story by Lee Child called, "Grit In My Eye". The story itself is slightly AU but still set in the Wizarding World. The most important thing to remember for this story is that Draco and Hermione have never met and did not go to Hogwarts together! Just assume that Draco went to Durmstrang and Hermione went to Hogwarts, but there is still a war and Voldemort is being a bitch as per usual. Got it? Alright. Otherwise this story is going to seem a bit bizarre.**

Dramione – Agent Otter

"_I wish I could rip out a page of memory, too bad we can rewrite our own history. _

_Such a mystery when he is here with me, this aint how it's supposed to be._

_Sleeping with the enemy, how do we reverse the chemistry?" _

I told the reporter that I wanted my husband there with me. He was surprised since that wasn't really how he wanted to do it. He wanted it to be all anonymous and mysterious. I told him that the whole point of the interview was to bring old secrets to light. He could hardly argue with my point as it was completely valid. Truth was I didn't care much for that rubbish. The reality was that it all happened thirty years ago and I was worried my memory would fail me. At least with my husband at my side he could help me keep the details straight. I didn't want to let slip names that would let the interviewer think that I had one too many confundus charms to the head during my service.

So he set up for the interview in our living room. It was only a single man and I knew him from way back so we could trust that he would write the truth. Dennis Creevy, his name was. A slight man with a head of golden blonde hair and wire rimmed spectacles. The interview that he was going to do with us was going to be part of a book on the Second Great Wizarding War. I was expecting difficult questions from the writer but his first one was relatively easy. It was more a question than a statement.

"You are the only person who knows the true story about Jean Otter, the famous spy for the Order."

"Yes," I said simply and my husband reached over and held my hand gently.

"You wrote a book about her, didn't you?" He asked and I nodded.

"Yes I did, but that was twenty five years ago." I informed him and he seemed to think it was relevant because he made a note on his little pad.

The first line went, "It started with grit in her eye and ended with three dead." Which was a good line, I thought. It grabbed the readers' attention and made them wonder what had happened. The book had done well and some of it was even true. However, it was very limited to its time. You must understand that this story takes place in the midst of the Second Great Wizarding War. People tend to forget that back then the wizarding world was a battleground between the Dark and Light. The Light was led by Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix and the Dark was led by Voldemort and the Deatheaters. It was in the middle of the war that spies like Jean Otter were sent out to find information.

Jean Otter's story starts long before she got to the main battleground of Wizarding London and goes on long after she had left. The six days in between the grit in her eye and the three dead men was only one small part of the story.

"What was Jean Otter like as a person?" The interviewer asked me and I tried not to frown in concentration. This was the first tough question of the interview and I had to think carefully. Because Jean Otter was two things. Firstly, in the here and now, she was everything you could expect from a modern day spy for the Order. She was fit and superbly strong in both physical combat and magical ability. She was intelligent and highly educated. Stupid people were not suited to the life of a spy during a war. They simply couldn't think fast enough on their feet or work out simple things. She was civilized and had sophisticated hobbies. She refused to be beaten by anything. If you challenged her she would beat you no matter what the cost. She would find a way.

Except she didn't, that time in Wizarding London. She was sent out in the height of the war when spy business was at its peak and tensions were running high. Information was gathered and the identity of most of the Dark spies were uncovered. Each of Voldermort's spies was given a shadow from the Light. The job of a shadow was to track the other spy's every movement, every minute, of every day. To live a life alongside the spy until such a time that they could be killed.

The system was by no means new and in turn the identity of each of the Order's Spies got a shadow of their own. Eventually shadows had shadows that had shadows. It was all very confusing really and meant that you had to watch your back at all times. It became a serious obstacle to efficiency of spying on Voldemort and the Deatheaters. Therefore as a spy your first job was to track down your shadow and kill them before they could kill you. Standard practice really and sort of like an operational throat clearing.

So Jean Otter completed her spy training and set off to wizarding London to hunt down and eliminate her shadow.

"And then what happened?" Creevy asked almost excitedly.

She got grit in her eye, that's what happened. On her very first day.

She was merely walking along in Diagon Alley and suspiciously viewing a man behind her in a red raincoat. Then a huge gust of autumn wind blew up the debris off the dirty cobblestone streets. Suddenly she couldn't see anything and her eye was burning causing them to tear horribly. She rubbed her eyes warily and opened them quickly. The man in the red raincoat was gone. Failure on her first day. She began taking in the damage her eyes managed to take. Her left one felt fine, but the right one was going to be a bit more of a problem. It felt like there was half a trashcan in there.

She blinked a few times and tried to keep moving. It wouldn't do to be caught out in the street. She stumbled on in the shadow of the Alley before she bumped into a tall, well dressed gentleman who was trying to pass her. She apologized quickly and he gave her a small polite smile before moving on.

Then he turned back.

He was slender for a man and tall. He wasn't particularly young and his eyes held a wary tiredness. He looked washed out and worn down despite his neat clothing.

She was immediately suspicious of him but he merely gave her a bit of a concerned look. "Are you alright, Miss?" He asked her. She shook her head and he frowned a little bit. "Can I help?"

"I just have something stuck in my eye." She told him and he nodded before he leaned closer to get a look.

"May I?" He asked her and she nodded her approval. He was quite a bit taller than her petite figure and his hands were gentle. "Hold still." He admonished her softly as she twitched. He separated the eyelid with his thumb and forefinger and then managed to clean her eye with his silk handkerchief.

"Look up." He instructed and she did so even though she didn't want to because it meant taking her eyes off his face. "Look left." That she did easily and gazed at the old faded sign for Ollivanders. He cleaned a little bit more and then gave her a triumphant look. "There." He said and she nodded again.

"Thank you." She told him and he shrugged at her.

"It was nothing." He told her and then was about to turn and leave when she caught the sleeve of his coat.

"Have dinner with me." She asked him and he looked very surprised at her request. "You know, to say thank you."

He obviously didn't know that his kindness could prevent her from being attacked and killed in a moment where she couldn't see. She wasn't about to tell him.

"I don't know." He answered hesitantly.

"We can have it at my hotel," She told him. "I just got here. I'm a travelling sales rep for potion ingredients." She fed him her cover story with ease.

Creevy was practically bouncing now. "Did he say yes?" He asked me.

I looked at his erratically writing hand and nodded. "Yes, he said yes."

However Jean was not sure if he would go through with it. She took a table for two at her hotel restaurant and waited. He came in right on time and was still impeccably dressed. He was good company. Quiet, slightly reserved but not excessively so. She guessed his age to be around twenty five but didn't ask him. His name was Abraxas but most people just called him Abe. He owned his own investing business and was in Wizarding London for a meeting.

They went to bed together that night. They were both lonely and she was out here on this mission on her own. She took him to be just another random face that she would probably never see again. They were together that night, and the next one and the next one. By the fifth night Jean was sure that it was more than just loneliness on both their sides.

After their fifth night she was captured as she exited her hotel to gather information. Abe was safe as he had left in the early hours of the morning, but when she stepped out onto the street a little it after nine she was surrounded by Deatheaters and captured. Resistance was impossible.

She was taken to one of the many Deatheater prisons, her wand taken away from her and she was locked in a holding cell. She was ashamed. At best she could maybe be exchanged for a few prisoners from the Order but she would have to live with her failure. She was also terrified because she could just as easily be tortured or handed over to Voldemort. She was left alone with her thoughts for a whole day, which was normal for the Dark side. They wanted you to work yourself up with as many 'what if' questions as possible.

"Then what happened?" Creevy asked almost childlike in his glee at hearing such an amazing story.

It got worse before it got better.

As she was sitting there Abe walked into her cell. He was still wearing his impeccable clothing. At first Jean thought that he had been captured too and cursed herself for putting him in danger. Then she realized that prisoners couldn't just flit from cell to cell as they pleased.

Abe smiled and then said, "I am your shadow, you idiot. I got you first."

Jean was devastated, of course. Doubly so, in fact, because she had made a great professional error and fallen in love with the enemy.

But then something extraordinary happened. Abe bent down to where she sat on her bed and kissed her. He took her wand out of his coat and discreetly slipped it to her.

"Listen carefully." He said, "You are regarded as a very important prisoner so you will be interrogated by three of top dogs. Kill them and we will make our escape together." He told her and she was in shock.

"Why?" Was the only word she could force from her lips.

He grinned at her before pulling her in to kiss her again. When he released her he smiled. "Because I love you, you idiot."

Creevy nodded thoughtfully as he made a few notes. "Hence the three dead Deatheaters?"

"Yes." I told him with a nod, glad that he was able to catch on.

"Jean Otter was a false name, wasn't it?" Creevy asked me and I nodded again.

"Yes it was." I smiled and my husband held my hand a little tighter.

"It was you, right?" He asked and I was impressed at how quickly he was able to piece it all together.

I grinned and for the first time through the whole interview he stopped writing.

"Which means," Creevy turned to look at my husband. "You must be Abe. Am I right, Mr Malfoy?"

A Cheshire grin appears on his face and he shrugs but doesn't answer. He merely turns to look at me and kisses my hand with a wink. Some secrets are better kept secret.


End file.
